


like you're running out of time

by TheLonelyJournalKeeper



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gen, IPRE Era, Libraries, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Original Character(s), No Romance, One Shot, POV Third Person Limited, Team as Family, Temporary Character Death, The Stolen Century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-11 10:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11146383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLonelyJournalKeeper/pseuds/TheLonelyJournalKeeper
Summary: It's nearing the end of the twenty-seventh year and Lucretia thinks she has enough time to at least save some information from this world before the Hunger comes. As it turns out, she's wrong.





	like you're running out of time

A still storm was gathering on the horizon. It was an ominous, familiar sight, but Lucretia didn’t worry. The Hunger wasn’t due to arrive for a few more days at least. Lucretia usually had a good sense on when it would arrive. That was the sort of skill you picked up after watching the Hunger invade twenty-six worlds—well, twenty-seven counting this one. 

This was the twenty-seventh cycle exactly. Lucretia had been keeping careful count in a particular journal she kept back in her quarters on the Starblaster. She’d made note of the number, name (if one was available), and a brief overview of each of the worlds she and the rest of the crew had visited so they wouldn’t lose track. 

This was especially important as, for some of those worlds, her records were the only source of information about them that still existed. The task was only slightly daunting. 

Of the twenty-seven worlds, the place she found herself now was one of the more interesting, not counting her original world. In terms of technology and development, it was a few centuries behind her home dimension (if she could even consider it her home at this point). 

But it made up for that with bountiful culture and a diverse population. The architecture was particularly striking. Huge Gothic style buildings lined every street. Not a single building was smaller than a manor, like the architects in this world had never figured out the meaning of the word “lowkey”. 

Lucretia appreciated the designs from an aesthetic viewpoint, but the looming structures did make her feel rather small. Nevertheless, with all the people living here and the Light of Creation still out of reach, Lucretia felt compelled to spend her last few days in this dimension gathering as much information as she could. She doubted any of the others would miss her just now. Davenport was watching the ship. She was free to explore.

The capital city’s main library was the largest building on the street, but strangely, it looked far more welcoming than either of the buildings flanking it. She marched up the steps. A few people clutching scrolls streamed out of one of the doors, but Lucretia didn’t stop to look at them—elves, probably, there seemed to be a majority of them here—she was on a mission. 

She pushed in one of the doors to the library and stepped inside. She was instantly dazzled by the vaulted ceilings, the mahogany tables that dotted the floor, and, of course, the rows upon rows, shelves upon shelves, of books and scrolls and papers. The building had appeared vast from the outside, but from within it seemed monolithic. The library contained more information than Lucretia could ever hope to summarize even if she had twenty-seven cycles to do it, but she’d be damned if she didn’t try. 

She was also instantly assaulted by the curious sense of stillness and quiet knowledge that seems to pervade every library. Strange how no matter the world, a library always felt like a library. There was something profoundly reassuring about that. 

Lucretia hardly knew where to start, but she was excited to. While in the interest of time perhaps it would’ve made sense to start at the information desk, she would rather seek information on her own. She’d been to a few libraries in this world before (though not quite on this scale); she knew how they worked. And she had a few days. 

She would’ve had longer, but it had taken an unfeasibly long time to convince the king and queen of this realm they could be trusted. Sadly, not the first time this happened. Appearing from another world in a silver ship could be quite off-putting in some dimensions. And then Magnus had needed help with something or Merle had needed help with something or whatever. 

Lucretia breezed past Fiction and Biographies and Graphic Novels and even old historical scrolls. All of which were quite interesting, but she knew she wouldn’t have time. She settled in Nonfiction, particularly Geography and World History. 

Within minutes, she had several thick tomes lying open on a table along with several journals. She read and took notes with astonishing speed. To someone observing, she supposed she appeared somewhat frantic, but she actually felt surprisingly calm. This was something she knew how to do and do _well_ ; she was completely engrossed in it.

She was filling pages and pages in each of her journals with neatly-written quotations and summaries and a few simply-drawn sketches and diagrams. She lost track of time completely. 

She only looked up when someone tapped her on the shoulder. She narrowly avoided jumping and leaving a streak of ink across both pages she was working on. 

She dropped her pens and turned to the person who had interrupted her. 

It was an exhausted-looking half-elf man. Well, she assumed he was half-elf, judging by the pointed ears and faint trace of stubble which did not typically coincide in elves or humans. 

“Hi,” he said hurriedly. “How do you do that?” 

“How do I do what?” she replied, bewildered. 

“That,” he said, gesturing at her journals. “Write with both hands. Is it magic?” 

She shook her head. “No…It’s just something I taught myself how to do.” She eyed him with both curiosity and suspicion, wondering what he wanted. 

He sighed. “Damn. I was hoping it was a spell. I’ve got two research papers due tomorrow.”

She was almost to afraid to ask, but she said, “And how much have you done so far?” 

“Well, I started one…last night. And another one this morning. So maybe a fifth of what I need done?” the half-elf replied. 

Lucretia winced. “I’m afraid I can’t help you there. Good luck.” She picked up her pens again, jotting down a few notes she’d thought up during the exchange. 

“Thanks,” he said and turned to go. Then he whirled back around like he’d remembered something. “Oh, yeah. You should go have lunch. You’ve been working all morning. What’re you researching anyway?” 

“Hmm?” she said distractedly, already engrossed in her notes again. “Oh. A bit of everything.” She paused as she processed the man’s words. 

Lucretia glanced at the complicated series of hourglasses that served to tell time in this world. It took her a moment to remember how to read them, but when she did, she realized the man was right. It was several hours after lunchtime as a matter of fact. She’d only just now realized how hungry she was. 

Reluctantly, she started packing up her notes. After a moment, she realized the man was still there. “Shouldn’t you be working on your essays?” she asked him, standing up.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, looking a bit guilty. “I’ll do that.” He hurried off. 

Lucretia made for the door, wondering where she could go to eat. Maybe Taako and Lup had made something back at the ship. More likely, they were off on their own escapade. That was fine; Lucretia had some money. She’d grab something to eat real quick and get right back to work. Assuming she could find a restaurant. 

She belatedly realized she should’ve asked the half-elf for directions to a cafe, but soon enough, she stumbled into a smallish building that smelled vaguely like fried potatoes and wandered through it until she arrived in a room full of tables. As near as she could figure, at least half of the rooms in this building were ornamental and this restaurant tucked away in the heart of the structure was the functional aspect of it. She thought that was interesting and made a note of it.

The food was equally interesting. What she’d thought were potatoes turned out to be bright blue vegetables shaped in perfect spheres. 

The taste wasn’t at all like potatoes either, more like candied ginger. She dined quickly, eager to get back to the library. The information she’d picked up in the restaurant had given her many more questions to research. 

She was so deep in thought she failed to notice how much the storm above her had grown. 

* * *

 

Lucretia was once again immersed in research when she heard it. A few hours had passed, but she barely noticed except for the steady filtering of students and researchers and bookworms and people who didn’t have anything better to do through library. 

In fact, she scarcely registered the noise at first. She heard it but did not process it. 

The sound was chaos and it was intimately familiar. She startled, almost knocking a book off the table, and rose from her seat, suddenly on high alert.

Something was very wrong. It was mid-afternoon, but the light pouring in through the windows seemed faint and dark.

Muffled by the thick stone walls of the building, Lucretia could still hear the sounds of chaos outside. Hundreds of feet hit the cobblestone road, running. Running from something, Lucretia knew that for certain, feeling sick with dread. Screams and panicked shouts echoed in the street.

This was the sound of the Hunger invading.

The other library patrons knew something was amiss too. They whispered to each other nervously. Someone raced to the door and opened it. With a start, Lucretia recognized him as the half-elf, still trying to finish his research papers most likely.

He opened the door to a horrifying scene. The sky was tar black, shot through with ribbons of gold and blue and red and green, and it _boiled_. There was madness in the streets, a complete state of disarray, as the citizens of this world ran. Black silhouettes, shadowy figures, were seemingly everywhere, in greater and greater numbers. A few of them cornered a dwarf and—

“Oh God,” Lucretia said, in a choked voice. Not now. She hadn’t been expecting it. She’d thought she had more time. 

“Run!” she shouted, stuffing her journals and notes into her bag. The books she would have to leave behind; there was simply no help for it. She was shaking slightly, heart pounding and pumping adrenalin through her veins rapidly. “Run!” she shouted again as the stunned patrons just stood there. 

She raced towards the door and out into the turmoil of the streets. “It’s not safe here!” she called over her shoulder. “Try to—“ 

Lucretia broke off. They didn’t have the Light this time. The Hunger was going to get it. This world was doomed anyway. There was nothing she could say to stop that. 

Holding her bag to her chest, she darted in between a human woman and a halfling man. One thought was lodged in her mind: _I have to get back to the ship_. 

She knew where it was from here. It was only a few blocks away. Davenport was on the ship right now, maybe some of the others too. They had to get away so they could try again to stop this.

She skidded around a street corner and ran straight into a cluster of the Hunger, maybe fifteen or twenty strong. The tall Gothic buildings stood crumbling and shattering in ruins around her. 

Her heart beat so fast she thought it would burst. “Oh, _damn_ ,” she swore. This was bad. This was really goddamn bad. Straight-up fighting wasn’t really her forte. She didn’t even have a sword with her. Or a staff.

Not that it would’ve made any difference if she had. She doubted even Magnus could take on twenty of them. She had no chance.

In the space of a nanosecond, she sized up the situation, calculating possibilities and odds. And then she ran. She plunged straight into the throngs of silhouettes, a single red figure amidst black.

She dove through the chink in the wall of silhouettes where they were spread the thinnest, but they were on in a second. She didn’t slow down, didn’t even look back. She couldn’t think about it. She had to get back to the ship. It was only a block from here. 

Once she made it back to the ship, they could fly away and—do this all over again. Lucretia stumbled. A piece of the pavement was cracked and worn under her feet. 

She managed not to trip, but the Hunger behind her caught up instantly. She felt something strike her from behind and horrible aching pain exploded in her back. She hit the ground hard, sprawling. 

Biting down on her lip to keep from screaming, she rolled so she was facing the Hunger, staring up at them. She felt something sticky on her palms. She glanced down. They were crimson. Crimson blood was seeping into her scarlet robes, red on red.

The Hunger nearest her hefted its arm like one might an executioner’s axe. 

Lucretia took a deep breath and closed her eyes. It was okay. It was okay. In a few moments, she’d be back on the Starblaster with her friends, her family.

She felt a sharp blow to the top of her head, and she felt pain, and she felt numb, and she felt dizzy. 

And then she felt nothing at all. 

* * *

Lucretia was exactly where she was when she’d first left her original dimension. She was wearing the same clothes. Her hair was exactly the same as it had been that day (trying to escape her ponytail). Her hands were in the exact same position as they had been (clutching a non-existent journal to her chest). She was on the deck of the Starblaster. 

Only, she wasn’t in her home dimension. For the twenty-eighth time, she had no idea where she was. 

But she’d have time to worry about that later. 

She sat down, cross-legged, right there on the deck of the ship. She didn’t trust her legs to support her just then. 

“Is everybody okay?” Magnus yelled from his position towards the front of the deck. He had a black eye again. Lucretia didn’t know why he felt the need to yell. They were all fairly close to each other in the same spots they always were when they entered a new world.

Everyone murmured that they were, looking each other over. Lucretia was relieved to see everyone there, looking as they always did, though she didn’t know why this time would be any different. There they were though—Magnus, Davenport, Taako, Lup, Barry, and Merle. Alive. 

Davenport set the ship to hover and came over to where Lucretia was sitting on the ground. Everyone else started gravitating towards each other, to ask what had happened and talk about what to do next. 

“Lucretia,” said Davenport. “What happened down there? We had to leave without you.” His nasally voice was tinged with concern, and for good reason: Lucretia always made it back to the ship when the Hunger invaded.

“I—oh my God. I died,” she said, swallowing hard. She didn’t quite believe it. She’d seen it happen to the others before, especially Magnus. She’d seen them die, or lost track of them, and seen them reappear once they escaped. But it felt very very strange to know it had happened to her. 

She had _died_. If it weren’t for all the strangeness and magic that kept the seven of them going, that could’ve been the end of her.

Davenport’s eyes widened. “Y-you died?”

She nodded and gave a small laugh. “Congratulations, Davenport. You’re the last one standing.” 

Davenport did not look thrilled to be the only one who hadn’t died yet.

“He is?” Magnus had wandered over to them. “They got you?”

“Yes,” Lucretia confirmed in a low voice, wrapping her arms around herself. “They got me.”

“Whaaaat? How did that happen?” Magnus said. “And why are you sitting on the floor?”

“Oh,” Lucretia said vaguely. She unfolded her arms and stood up, dusting off her robes. “The…the Hunger killed me. I was doing some research in, uh, the main library, and I completely lost track of the time. I thought we had more than that. I was trying to make my way back to the ship but…” She trailed off, lightly touching her back where she’d been hit. She was fine, but she could still remember what it had felt like. 

Lucretia cleared her throat. “Did everyone else make it out okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” Magnus said casually. “We saw that things started looking pretty rough around lunchtime and started packing it in.”

“We were waiting for you to join us when the attack started,” Davenport said. “We thought you’d find us.”

Lucretia bowed her head. “I’m sorry. I was very immersed in what I was researching—“ She broke off. “My journals.” 

She looked down at herself, turned out the pockets in her robe, frantically searched for her bag. “My journals,” she said again with rising panic. “They’re gone.”

“Makes sense,” Magnus mused. “You did die. They’re probably with your body back in—oh. I guess the Hunger got them then. That sucks.”

Lucretia reeled. “Oh God. No. No. No.” She closed her eyes, feeling sick. 

“Lucretia? You okay?” Davenport asked.

“No,” she said again, trying not to panic.

“What’s wrong?” Magnus said. “You have lots of journals.” 

“You don’t understand,” she said, opening her eyes to look at him. “Those journals contained all of my research about the plane we just left. The plane that was just consumed by the Hunger. There’s nothing left. I had notes about systems of power, the geography, the architecture, these really quite amazing vegetables I found at a restaurant…It’s all gone.”

“Oh,” Magnus said. “Oh, shit.”

“Yes,” Lucretia agreed, sighing. “It just—it all went to waste! Damn it!” Her hands twitched with agitation. 

“Lucretia…” Davenport said, looking concerned.

Magnus spread his arms for a hug, but Lucretia held up a hand. “Please. Don’t touch me.”

Strictly speaking, her body was freshly rejuvenated, but her mind felt exhausted. She was still shuddering from the memory of the Hunger’s attack, the fear of being surrounded, the feeling her blood on her hands, and the knife-sharp ache of pain where she’d been hit. 

“Hey, what’s going on here?” said a gruff voice. Merle and the others had wandered over, clearly sensing some sort of ordeal. 

Lucretia didn’t feel much like explaining so she let Magnus and Davenport do the talking. 

“Shit,” Merle muttered. “Death by Hunger ain’t a fun way to go.” Lucretia knew he spoke from experience. After Magnus, he’d probably died the most. “Have we got any booze up here? She looks like she could use it.”

“I’m fine,” Lucretia said. Though she could actually go for a glass of wine right now. A glass of wine, a book, no worrying about the state of the universe.

“Sorry about your notes,” Barry said. “Did you back any of them up? You’re usually so methodical about storing your notes.”

“Some,” Lucretia said with a sigh. “I shouldn’t have brought so many with me. There’s just my personal record of the beginning of the year left, and we didn’t really learn anything all that important then.”

Barry winced in sympathy. He’d lost research in transit before too. 

“Well, hey, that’s something,” Taako said. “Besides, it’s only one year out of what? Thirty?”

“This is twenty-eight,” Lucretia said. The tension was starting to drain away. There was something comforting about being surrounded by the rest of her crew who were behaving exactly how she would’ve expected them to. 

“It’s a shame though. The library there was really incredible,” she murmured, more to herself than anyone else. 

“We’ll get ‘em back,” Lup said casually. “You can get your journals back when we get back all of the rest of the stuff the Hunger took from us. But in the meantime, why don’t we look over where we are now?” 

“You’re right,” Lucretia said, squaring her shoulders. “We should focus on where we are now.” 

“That’s the spirit,” Lup said. “I hope we’re somewhere with people.” She swished over to side of the ship and peered over the side. “Hey, guys! Check this out!” 

Exchanging a look with Davenport, Lucretia hurried over to the side of the ship, and the seven of them gazed out over the new world they found themselves in.

Lucretia’s fingers itched to start recording what she saw. She didn’t say anything, but Merle handed her a new journal and pen. 

She looked at him inquiringly. 

“You always need a new one when we go someplace new so I bought one.” He shrugged. “And it’s not like the exchange rate between dimensions is any good.” 

Smiling, Lucretia opened the journal to a fresh page and began to write. 

**Author's Note:**

> Lucretia's my favorite. I love her so much, and I was wondering about how many times everyone has died so I wrote this. I feel like she and Davenport died the least. I also think it must've been a big deal when the last one of them died. Kind of a bummer to think about it. 
> 
> I usually capitalize my fic titles, but I didn't capitalize this one for the #aesthetic. 
> 
> I don't know why that half-elf hung around so long. I was just gonna use him for a goof but he kept talking for some reason.


End file.
